"It was such a shot in the arm to see your star," Edwards recalls of first laying eyes on the fully realized, scaly wrecking machine. "It was like knowing you were pregnant vs. seeing the ultrasound. I suddenly remembered I was making this iconic movie."

It's Godzilla's name on the marquee, yet Edwards didn't want to humanize him or give him too much personality."To me, he's like a force of nature, like the wrath of God or vengeance for the way we've behaved," Edwards says. "If this really happened, it would be like Sept. 11."I want it to be epic. I want to get the hairs on the back of your neck up."

Coming from Monsters, in which he designed — as cost-efficiently as possible — a quasi-futuristic setting of alien creatures taking over Mexico, Edwards is reveling in the big-budget filmmaking that Godzilla offers him.
"It's the closest thing to being a god as I think there is in terms of a job you could have," he says. "You picture something one day and draw it, and the next day, it's physical and there in front of you no matter how insane."

Edwards adds that there was a "massive appeal" for doing the kind of movie that everybody will want to see. "OK, all your life, say, you want to be a footballer and you played for your local team, and then one day, someonesays, 'Do you want to play in the World Cup final?' Who wouldn't say yes to that?"